{"id":246,"date":"2017-02-01T19:29:57","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T19:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/?p=246"},"modified":"2017-02-01T19:29:57","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T19:29:57","slug":"various-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/2017\/02\/various-links\/","title":{"rendered":"Various Links"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/ipsos-na.com\/download\/pr.aspx?id=16379\">Ipsos\/Reuters Poll<\/a> on Trump\u2019s Executive Order on Immigrant Ban<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are some terrifying opinion poll numbers about Trump\u2019s immigration ban: 48% of the population, including 82% of Republicans and 44% of Independents, agree with it, while only 41% oppose it. So while it\u2019s fair to call it a controversial policy, it\u2019s also wrong to call it unpopular. (Support\/opposition depends a bit on the wording, but the general tendency is clear.)<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re like me, then probably all your friends are horrified by Trump\u2019s executive order. But on the basis of these numbers, don\u2019t be too surprised if Trump\u2019s popularity doesn\u2019t take a long-term hit over it. You should also not expect people like Paul Ryan to speak out: Republican representatives might commit electoral suicide if they opposed the ban too loudly, given these numbers.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the (pessimistic) message. Tribalism\/nationalism is simply that powerful, and this is easy to underestimate if you come from the liberal-cosmopolitan bubble.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Will Wilkinson, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/niskanencenter.org\/blog\/tale-two-moralities-part-one-regional-inequality-moral-polarization\/\">A Tale of Two Moralities, Part One: Regional Inequality and Moral Polarization<\/a>\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wilkinson looks at some of the data of who voted for Trump, and he tries to locate this in a wider sociological narrative about cultural change, and a growing economic and cultural divide between American cities and the American countryside. Even if you distrust the broad-brush cultural labels Wilkinson uses to classify different value schemes, he manages to tell a worrying story about the growing divide. Wilkinson\u2019s piece is also full of useful nuggets of information, like this one:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The growing gap in economic output between big cities and the rest of America implies that Republican-leaning counties account for a dwindling share of the national product. According to Muro and Lui, in the 2000 election, which also featured a split in the popular and electoral votes, Bush won 2397 counties, accounting for 46% of GDP, while Gore won 659 counties accounting for 54% of GDP. In the 2016 election, the general pattern repeats: the Republican candidate wins many many more counties responsible for a smaller share of American economic output, but the asymmetry has become even crazier. Clinton took just 472 counties, which account for 64% of GDP, while Trump took 2584, which account for just 36% of GDP. \u00a0That\u2019s amazing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Amazing indeed.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Steve Horwitz, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/bleedingheartlibertarians.com\/2017\/01\/liberalism-in-the-balance\/\">Liberalism in the Balance<\/a>\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A short piece in which Horwitz suggests that libertarians should pay more attention to the badness of Trump, and the structural damage he is likely to cause to the American constitutional system.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>David Frum, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2017\/03\/how-to-build-an-autocracy\/513872\/?utm_source=twb\">How to Build an Autocracy<\/a>\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Frum\u2019s argument is long and full of insights, so I won\u2019t summarise it. But here\u2019s one particularly challenging passage:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Whatever else happens, Americans are not going to assemble in parade-ground formations, any more than they will crank a gramophone or dance the turkey trot. In a society where few people walk to work, why mobilize young men in matching shirts to command the streets? If you\u2019re seeking to domineer and bully, you want your storm troopers to go online, where the more important traffic is. Demagogues need no longer stand erect for hours orating into a radio microphone. Tweet lies from a smartphone instead.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPopulist-fueled democratic backsliding is difficult to counter,\u201d wrote the political scientists Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz late last year. \u201cBecause it is subtle and incremental, there is no single moment that triggers widespread resistance or creates a focal point around which an opposition can coalesce \u2026 Piecemeal democratic erosion, therefore, typically provokes only fragmented resistance.\u201d Their observation was rooted in the experiences of countries ranging from the Philippines to Hungary. It could apply here too.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Frum suggests that gradually \u201cbacksliding democracies\u201d like Hungary and Venezuela provide a good comparative model to predict a possible American future (rather than somewhat hyperbolic comparisons with fascism). On this scenario, we won\u2019t see the outright abandonment of the American institutional system\u2014e.g., separation of powers, a free press\u2014but rather a successive hollowing-out of the conventions that underlie the system. If this is true, then some of the main damage Trump could do might have already occurred,\u00a0 by crossing many of the invisible conventions that buttress a healthy democracy\u2014e.g., transparency in one\u2019s financial dealings, a broad commitment to the truth, and openness to media criticism. Highly recommended reading.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rand.org\/content\/dam\/rand\/pubs\/perspectives\/PE100\/PE198\/RAND_PE198.pdf\">The Russian \u2018Firehose of Falsehood\u2019 Propaganda Model<\/a>\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A no-nonsense summary of how Russian propaganda works, supported by observations from psychology of common weaknesses in information processing. The application to Trump-style \u201calternative facts\u201d propaganda isn\u2019t raised in the piece, but should be obvious. Paul and Matthews explain many less obvious characteristics of propaganda\u2014e.g., that propagandists don\u2019t seem to care about contradicting themselves, and why propaganda emphasises quantity and repetition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ipsos\/Reuters Poll on Trump\u2019s Executive Order on Immigrant Ban These are some terrifying opinion poll numbers about Trump\u2019s immigration ban: 48% of the population, including 82% of Republicans and 44% of Independents, agree with it, while only 41% oppose it. So while it\u2019s fair to call it a controversial policy, it\u2019s also wrong to call [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthiasbrinkmann.de\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}